This information comes from the assessment conducted in country for the Tanzania report, which was published in February 2008.
In just 15 years, Tanzania has emerged from the constraints of government control, centralization, and predominance of the state in all economic affairs, to a new emphasis on the free market and private sector-led growth. From the re-invention of agricultural cooperatives and other producer associations, to pro-investment law reform strategies, to proactive engagement of the private sector in updating its infrastructure, Tanzania has made a series of important choices that grant more freedoms and opportunities to actors throughout the economy.
The results of this transformation amount, at least in part, to an East African success story: Tanzania’s annual growth since 2000 has usually exceeded six percent, one of the strongest recent growth rates in the world.
Yet Tanzania remains one of the world’s poorest countries. With the country’s continuing dependence on agriculture – a sector that employs about 80 percent of the workforce and supplies nearly 45 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) – reforms have yet to make a broad-based impact because they do not adequately reach the rural areas. The process of building on the potential of Tanzania’s agricultural resources, as well as strengthening other sectors, such as services, mining, and international trade, will take another generation of invested knowledge, diversification, and institutional reform.
